The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  Every glancing detail and minute observation culled from the Hamstermen's sojourn on Chil was already seared into Symun and he found it torture to listen yet again, as Ozmun called over this lore in his sing-song voice: the fine stitching of cotton shirts and the scissoring of hair, the curious motion of wheeled vehicles, and the equally peculiar burdening of jeejees and burgakine. Even decades later the amazement that had prevented the Hamstermen from getting to the nub of it all was still evident. For theirs was a word picture of only the surface of these remarkable things: the chaps with their shooters and railings on the Bouncy Castle ramparts, the ocean-going ferries in the harbour, the beefansemis that clustered about it. Symun cherished a desire to read, so he considered it foolish of the granddads not to have attempted to set down their account, so that it might be read in the same manner as the Book. He sighed and, gathering his legs under him, got up. Eyem ahtuví, U Ió, he said to no one in particular.

  Symun strolled away from the Council ground, slid between the shitter and the Edduns gaff, then sauntered up the stream through the heart of the manor. Down by the Council wall the dads could hear the mummies singing: We R ve Amster gurls, we ware R air in curls … When Symun appeared they fell silent. It was daddytime, with two days to go until Changeover. The opares were minding the babies and toddlers in the dads' gaffs; the older kids were out with the motos. The bare earth surrounding the walls of the gaffs was beaten and churned by the hurrying feet of the mummies as they worked. Symun stood and, since there were no dads to observe him doing so, watched them intently.

  Shell Brudi and Bella Funch sat on the ground grinding flour in the quern set between them. Their legs were outstretched and each bent forward in turn to grasp the wooden rod and pull the heavy top stone for half of its rotation. The air was white with wheatie dust, and sweat stood out on their brows. Shell's sister, Liz, was nursing her newborn baby as she sat in the lea of the Brudi gaff. The infant, a girl, was only a day old and had been anointed with moto oil by Effi that tariff. If she survived the next two blobs without dying of lockjaw, she would then receive both a name and the wheel of Dave.

  Effi herself stood at a trestle table braiding the tops of some crybulbs together, so that they could be hung up in the rafters for the kipper. On the table were piles of herbs: jack-by-hedge, comforty, blacktartdog and piss-a-bed. Two other mummies were carding wool, two more were spinning thread. Another posse were changing the thatch on the Bulluk gaff. Three mummies carried bundles of dried pricklebush on their backs and clambered up and down the curved walls, depositing them on the eaves, while one remained aloft so she could lash them down. Nearer to Symun, at another trestle table set up between the Ridmun and Dévúsh gaffs, stood Caff Ridmun, who was dyeing cloth in a tub. Caff, with her withered leg, who leaned heavily so as to favour the sound one. Caff, whom he loved – much as he had once loved his mummy, and still loved Champ, his moto. Caff, who as an opare had been courted, then wed, by Fred Ridmun. Yet, now Caff was knocked up, Fred had no more eyes for her than any daddy did for a mummy. He had paid her childsupport, so he would lie with her again in the mummies' gaff once the baby was weaned – but he would seldom, if ever, speak to her. When she was on the blob Caff would wear a red rag on her cloakyfing – and at that time her old man would not come near her at all.

  Symun burned with his desire for Caff – or was it that strange mummyself left inside of him after his final Changeover that wanted not only to lie with her but also to be with her, look at her and talk with her? He could not say; he knew only a desperate motorage as he stared at her slim shoulders and the thick brown plait that trailed from her headdress. If she felt his gaze on her, Caff made no response. She went on pummelling the cloth, gently shoving her full, round tank against the tabletop. Eventually Symun turned and walked away along the shore in the direction of the Shelter.

  Fred Ridmun had a few words of the Book; Bill Edduns and Sid Brudi also. Symun Dévúsh had some as well. The granddads didn't set any great store on reading. Fukka Funch, who had no words at all, held more of the Knowledge than any of the other young men, and it was often he who led the calling over in the Shelter. There may not have been a Driver on Ham for five years, although Mister Greaves had promised them another, yet it was universally – if tacitly – understood that for any Hamsterman to have too many words would be a usurpation of that role. In the meantime, the Guvnor needed only enough words to mark out the sections of the Book: where a run began and where it ended, the order of the points, the headings for the Doctrines and Covenants, the instructions set out in the Letter to Carl. This was sufficient, for the dads' collective memory furnished the rest.

  When old Dave Brudi knew that he was dying he called Fred Ridmun to him in the Brudi gaff and handed over his Guvnor's cap and the Council cudgel. The screen was tinting earlier and earlier in the second tariff, while the final darkness was fast approaching, for the old Guvnor as well. Passing by the door on cold mornings, when the ground was irony hard and his breath misty, Symun saw his mate bent low over the old granddad's sofabed and heard Dave grunting:

  – Iss nó nó, iss no-t, no-t. Ve Búk iz awl in Arpee, C. Vese wurds wiv ough in em – vair trikki. Sumtyms vair off sahnds lyke coff, uvvatyms vair ow sahnds lyke plow. Nah less ear yer kee wurds, mì sun.

  It was a testament to the departing Guvnor's bearing and fortitude that he had enough strength at the end to instruct Fred in these phonics, for, by the time the kipper season came, Dave was dead and buried in the little graveyard behind the Shelter, where the wheels on top of the headstones spun crazily in the mournful winds.

  Symun made a point of always being the last to leave the Shelter after the dads had called over the runs and points. He helped Fred to tidy up the tincans, swab the table and straighten its cover, then put the Hamstermen's sole copy of the Book away in the micro. Fred was usually preoccupied – the office of Guvnor brought heavy responsibilities and only modest rewards. He was entitled to an extra tank of moto oil from every slain beast, an extra rip of land in the home field, and an extra share of both feathers and seafowl whenever the pedalo went out to the Sentrul Stac or Nimar. In turn he had to be the first to make the leap on to the rocks when the dads were birding, and he had to be first up the stack – a dizzying, dangerous ascent. He also had to settle all disputes on the island, thus making himself the focus of much resentment. When the Hack came, it was Fred who would have to negotiate with him, bartering the Hamsters' produce for the rent, and this too was a thankless task.

  Fred thought it a bit odd the way Symun would open the Book whenever they were alone together and, pointing to this or that word, ask him to read it out; yet not very, for Symun had never been like the other Hamstermen. Where they adapted themselves to the rhythms of their island, its seasons and its tides, he jibed against them. Where they found certainty in the Book and its Knowledge, he was always questioning, his dancing eyes piercing to the core of things.

  As autumn progressed, the island's multitudinous greens changed to a cascade of copper finery, which then faded to tawny browns, dull silvers and mossy blacks. The equinoctial gale rose one night and come lampon the trees were bare, their branches making thin cracks in the clear, kipper screen. The mums retreated to the mummies' gaffs, where they wove rough bubbery with the woolly the Hack had brought that summer. The dads also retreated to their own gaffs, where they turned this coarse stuff into cloakyfings, jeans, T-shirts and jackets; for just as weaving was mummies' graft, so was tailoring daddies'. The motos were brought into the byres that took up half of each gaff, and the kids hunkered down with them for warmth. So the Hamsters drew in upon themselves in their little manor. All the Hamsters save one, for Sy Dévúsh began to spend more and more time in that peculiar state, so unfamiliar to his fellows, of being alone.

  All that kipper Symun haunted the foreshore. The blisterweed lay on the ground, hollow, papery reeds that crunched harmlessly beneath his feet. The tide was never that high or low on Ham – even at dipped and full beam it only ro
se a matter of a few steps. This moderation was seemingly in harmony with the temperate clime of the isle. When the tide was out at the curryings on the north coast of Ham, Symun could gain the shallows, then wade unobserved, either to the east, under the Gayt, or to the west beneath the bluffs of the Ferbiddun Zön. Here, on the most isolated promontory of Ham, facing due south, stood the Exile's pathetic semi. Often Symun would see Luvvie Joolee wandering up and down one of the groynes, her gaunt face set, her eyes fixed on distant and unattainable prospects.

  In buddout and summer Symun would have been with other Hamstermen, out netting prettybeaks, or else gathering the mussels that clung to the weedy flanks of the groynes. The mummies came on to the foreshore as well, if there were particular herbs they needed, or a dead seadog had been washed up. And all the Hamsters went there from time to time to gather fresh Daveworks, although this task was mostly left to the children, who, it was believed, benefited from it. Every Hamster had his or her Daveworks, strung on to lengths of thread. Now that the Driver was long gone, the dads would tell theirs as they sat in the Shelter and called over the runs and the points. The mums wore theirs as necklaces. Daveworks were also nailed to the lintels of the Hamsters' gaffs and garlanded their motos. Field strips were marked out by poles from which Daveworks dangled, serving both to scare off the birds and to sanctify the crops. Certain groves in the woods, because they were the site of an ancient calamity, had become shrines, adorned with posies, scrawled messages and Daveworks. Here the Hamsters came to speak to Dave through the intercom.

  Real Daveworks were most prized, because they bore phonics and were therefore fragments of the Book. Toyist Daveworks, if they were particularly fine and realistic, were also kept by some, in the belief that sooner or later Dave himself would come to redeem them for that which they depicted. Daveworks came in many shapes: there were straight ones and bent ones, T-shaped and H-shaped, circular and square, spherical and triangular. These were all designated accordingly: strayts, bentuns, tees, aytchez, sirkúls, skwares, bawls and trys. Most were too convoluted to be given a name; even the term 'plastic' – for a great many Daveworks bore these phonics, or at least some – could not serve to differentiate them, for as it was written in the Book, plastic was only the vital clay from which the world had been moulded.

  What the Hamsters did know was that the supply of Daveworks was inexhaustible, continual proof of the immanence of Dave. They were more common on the southern coast, where whole reefs lay offshore. After a storm fresh Daveworks would be freed and come floating in to lodge in the sand and shingle. The Hamsters could simply have waded out to the reef and gathered as many as they wanted, if the crabs in their thousands hadn't deterred them. Not because of their claws – which could deliver at most a nip – but because their presence suggested that the reef was toyist. Dävwurks cum in Daves oan tym, said Effi Dévúsh, no Rs.

  Symun's expeditions in search of Daveworks were quite different. He sought only real Daveworks, and he looked for them with great single-mindedness. He was searching for those that bore discernible words, and when he found one that duplicated those already in his collection, he discarded it. For there were many bearing the phonics M-A-D-E, H-O-N-G or .-C-O-M; and quite a few that had E-N-G-L-A-N-D and C-H-I-N-A. 'England' he knew to be Dave's term for Ingerland, but of .COM there was no mention in the Book – at least not in the runs he knew. Symun kept his Daveworks in the hollow trunk of a dead groovebark on the fringes of the Ferbiddun Zön.

  With the alphabet he had gleaned from Fred, Symun was able to decipher his Daveworks. By matching the words he had himself found to those words he could see on those rare occasions he could handle the Book, he came to be able to read. Symun was intelligent, formidably so, and while the first few phrases had cost him whole tariffs of frustration, once he had cracked the code entire rants of the Book leaped off the page at him.

  Naturally Symun was familiar with the Book; all Hamstermen were. Its runs and points were called over by them in unison, in the Shelter. Its doctrines and covenants were constantly on their lips as they disciplined their mummies, opares and boilers. Its Ware2, guvs were what they welcomed one another with, and its farewells to the Lost Boy were their valedictions. Yet much of what they recited was gibberish to them – deprived, as they were, of the good offices of a Driver. Now that Symun could read he could provide his own interpretation: he could see how the Book explained Ham, its shape, its isolation, its peculiar character. This was the true revelation: the island, which had for all his life been an immutable given, now became fluidly legible. Then he knew what he must do. He understood what his mummy had implied but dared not openly state: he should use the Book to penetrate the mysteries of the Ferbiddun Zön.

  The Hamsters were sowing the kipper wheatie. First the mummies went on their hands and knees rooting out the weeds; the daddies came after them, casting the seed along the rips. It was mummy-time, so babies in swaddling were propped up in the furrows; they bawled but no one paid them any mind. The Hamsters worked as one, the dads chatted a little among themselves while the mummies were silent. A sadness lay over the whole community. Caff Ridmun's baby had been born a month before, in due course it was anointed by Effi, and then, eight days later, after the most excruciating suffering, the mite had died. Unnamed and unblessed by Dave, its little corpse had been buried without a wheelstone in the waste ground beyond the graveyard.

  It was a fresh, breezy day. Mountainous clouds passed over Ham, dark grey at their flat bases, brilliant white at their lumpy peaks. To the south the Sentrul Stac rose from the choppy sea, its crenellated sides streaked white and brown with gull shit; while beyond it the far islands of Surrë were a bright green streak along the horizon. Beams of foglight fell on the land and on the white-capped waves, yet there was a damp tang to the air – there would be screenwash before nightfall. Frogwash, the Hamsters called it, because they believed that at this time of the year the showers were sticky with spawn. The crinkleleafs and smoothbarks above the home field quickened with buds, and their limbs tossed in the breeze. The land birds had begun to return at the new headlight, and as they worked the Hamstermen hailed them, Orlrì, Bob! Orlrì, Jen! Orlrì, Tom! while the kids ran at them with flails, scaring them away from the newly sown seed.

  Gari Funch had finished his changebag of seed and gone up into the trees to relieve himself when he saw Symun Dévúsh coming along the Layn from the moto wallows. Later on, Gari said there was an aura about Symun that struck him as soon as he saw the other young dad. His mates teased him about it, saying, Ure lyke awl ve Funchis, Fukka, so shortarsed anifyngs up in ve air 2 U! Yet he stuck to his recollection of Symun floating above the ground, with a wisp of mist wrapped around him like a cloakyfing, while his jeans and T-shirt were rent.

  – Ware2, guv? Gari had hailed him, and then, as Symun wafted closer, he said, Orlrì, mayt?

  Symun only looked straight through him, his blue eyes glassy. Gari stepped forward and made to take his shoulder, but Symun twisted away and blurted:

  – Bakkoff! Eyem nó Symun no maw, Eyem ve Geezer nah, Eyev ung aht wiv Dave, C, an ees toll me ve troof.

  – W-wotcher meen? Gari spluttered.

  – Lyke Eye say, Eye bin in ve Zön, Eye bin 2 ve playce vair ee berried ve Búk, an ee cum 2 me, an ee giv me anuwah Búk – yeah, a nú 1 – an we cauled í ovah togevvah, yeah, an ee toll me 2 cum an tell U Ió abaht i, ri.

  – Bluddyel.

  – Bluddyel iz abaht ve syze uv í, mayt, coz iss awl chaynj fer nah. Dave sez weev gó ve rong end uv ve stikk – ee doan wannus livin lyke vis, nó torkin wiv ar mummies, treetin em lyke shit an vat. Iss ve saym wiv ve Nú Lundun stuff, ee sez iss awl bollox, ee doan give a toss abaht bildin Nú Lundun, aw ve Pee-See-bleedin-Oh. Ee sez we shood liv az bess we can an nó wurri, if we wanner do fings diffrent iss fyn bì im …

  There was much more of this, all spoken in a rush by Symun, his voice strangely breathy and high-pitched. If this was blasphemous to Gari, it was also beguiling. All his life Dave had be
en present to him yet invisible, untouchable and unreachable; now here was Sy – who Gari knew as well as he knew himself – claiming to have spoken with Dave and saying that he'd received a second Book, which did away with all of the tiresome strictures inhibiting the Hamsters' natural inclinations. Gari wasn't the most credulous of the Hamsters, but, even if he'd been disposed to challenge Symun, he was forestalled by the Geezer, who began to spout whole chunks of the new Book. They were beautiful to Gari's ears: sonorous, ringing – incontrovertibly the words of Dave. Gari felt his bowlegs buckling beneath him, and he collapsed to the ground. Worming forwards in the muddy lane, he reached out and touched Symun's foot – now reassuringly earthbound – with a trembling hand. Orlrì, ven, Geezer, he said faintly.

  Geezers had been a part of the religious life of Ham for as far back as the chain of linked individual memories reached. These were charismatic dads – and occasionally mums – touched by the Word of Dave, who sprang on to the stage afforded by the island and strutted there for a few months or even years. Certain brick-built hovels on the margins of the Gayt were known as the 'Geezers' gaffs', and among the Hamsters the feeling was that the Geezers had been present in the time of the giants – or even before. Naturally, whenever a Driver had been among them, all talk of the Geezers was suppressed, yet the receptivity of the Hamsters to such things remained high, so that when Symun came down through the home field spouting revelation the daddies and mummies cast away their tools and followed him to the Shelter. The screen itself responded to Symun's new calling; Dave's demister powered up and swept the clouds up into higher and higher masses, which teetered, then dispersed with supernatural rapidity, leaving the foglamp blazing down on the green isle.